[mature] i feel a bad moon rising - Wolfbane

[Lepis]

I watch the smooth dip of his back turn from black to lighter black in the growing dawn, and trace the feathers of his cloud-white wings as the silence grows. So focus am I on these minute tasks that I am startled by his touch on my jaw. It was a gentle kiss but I nearly flinch away, too ready for it to be a blow. There is a moment of tension, barely long enough for my heart to beat, and then I recognize it for what it is.

His words stem the pooling worry, replace it with a growing sense of elation that is entirely foreign. Though I had wanted this, I had not truly dared hope he might want it too. Not when he has everything a man might want (namely, a kingdom and endless women) and I have, well, only myself. Myself and his trust, now, he says. I feel his smile rather than see it, and my own face is split into a similar expression. I feel foolish and too giddy to care as he leans closer to press another kiss to my skin. Each caress seems firmer than the last, though perhaps this is because I press myself against him, strangely desperate for a lack of space between us.

I, who have shied away from contact for years, want him to never let me go.

"You have mine," I tell him, and rather than the weight I had expected to feel, I find that these admissions serve only to make me feel ever lighter. "I love you."

Is there anything else I’d like, he asks me, as though he has not just given me the only thing I have ever truly wanted. I smile at that thought, as well as at the way he responds to the way I toy with his bristled mane. This is not new, this knowledge of the flesh, but there is a foreign thrill to knowing that it is Bane, that I have made no use of my gift and still he quivers beneath my touch. I want more, I discover, I want to find how far this heat that grows each place we touch might spread.

"There is," I tell him, the thrill of adrenaline fizzing through my veins in a way I have never felt, traveling from my chest and spiraling outward. Can he feel the lightning like I can, I wonder? Is there a crackle where my lips meet his shoulder or is it only in my mind? It doesn’t matter; I quiet those question in favor of more pleasant thoughts, more pleasurable ones.

My lips trail down his spine, having travelled up his shoulder with a half-dozen sparking caresses. "A family," I say, and feel no need to wait with bated breath for his reply. Instead I glance over my shoulder, pressed now against the curve of his yellow haunch. The smile that might never leave my face remains, and it is joined now by something more mischievous in the blue-grey sky of my eyes. "Or at least a good-faith effort to start one."

@[Wolfbane]
no mood killing emotional projection here :|

[Wolfbane]

When I'm alone slow dancing in the dark

Forbidden.
He feels it like the roil of black snakes in his gut when Lepis quivers beneath the first kiss. Had they not been so still and faintly charged Wolfbane might’ve missed it, yet he doesn’t shy away. It only makes him wonder for a second if his emotions are all his own, or if (even worse) the perlino mare wasn’t earnest. Only a second, though. Much shorter than the moments that drag on afterwards where he can sense the abrupt change and hear, at last, something that confirmed every second thought he’d ever had about the Queen of Sylva.

This feels like something they’ve always known. Maybe never said, or brought up until now, (the way he prefers, like a crashing avalanche) still as natural to hear and likewise express as if they’d known it for ten, twenty years. Amazingly the second those words fall from her comely lips a jolt of lightning glances through him, leaving the brute reeling for a moment. Lepis wants more, and yes he can feel the adrenaline take a suckerpunch right to his train of thought. She’s moved to his shoulder, he can’t help but explore her own.

The dame’s skin shifts again underneath a slow-dawning light, “Mute gold.” he notes, registering that words are ringing in his overturned ears, just not exactly hearing them. Two pewter curves have him mesmerized and she’s bringing them close enough to touch. How could he possibly refrain from pressing his nose into her sacred flesh? From smelling the sudden desire that radiates as molten steam?

Bane is so in tune with the rhythm of her body they simultaneously turn back to look at one another, her steel blue gaze clicking into the jagged edges of his moss green stare. Without question or provocation her mate holds the look, lets her see every square inch of his vulnerability and counteracts that exposure by toying with the silky dock of her tail. “I can manage that.” the brute murmurs, “I want you so much I can’t stand it.” He thinks, blending their feathers into one another the more they caress.

Instinct guides him forward, taking control where he lacks physical experience, and the Lord finds himself hunched yellow chest-to-milky rump. Both his colorless wings have spread around her, bent in the direction of Lepis’ sloping shoulders to cloak their eventual joining and steady his ascent. Tender, a bit enthusiastic, yet he’s not in a rush like some hot-headed animal. Countless reasons for his celibacy had amounted to this moment - he wasn’t eager to spoil it. Lepis (born a Queen regent, raised as a royal, descended from royalty herself) deserved better, and she could rest assured that her unseasoned lover would take the time necessary for giving as well as receiving pleasure.

A pause; he glances over the ridges and valleys of her back, a reverent worshiper come to pay homage to a goddesses shrine, lifting one splayed foreleg to rub at her navy heel. “Are you ready for me?” the final question comes, bouncing hollow and empty over the stone walls of their secret den.

Don't follow me, you'll end up in my arms

@[Lepis] boner alert. Should we rate this M for *magical*?

[Lepis]

Since the first taste of a world without my magic, I have embraced each opportunity to be entirely mundane. It is not possible in Sylva; it is only possible here. Here in Loess. I had thought that it was only possible alone or in the presence of a god, but as my king caresses me I feel the desire pooling inside me and seeping from every pore. I hold it tight, a reassuring bit of non-magical comfort and lose myself in the soft green of his eyes.

I can’t imagine anything more perfect.

This is perfect.

His movements are enthusiastic but I do not freeze, and least not for more than a moment. ‘I can manage’ that he says, as my pale feathers weave into his. I recall our daring plummet down a cliff, the joy in his expression as we’d pulled up above the water at the very last moment. My grin must be foolishly wide, but I don’t even care.

The silly grin fades only into something equally pleased, a soft smile and the sensation that I am melting.

A step backward presses my rump more firmly against him, my long navy tail lifted high and to the side and the white ends flicking against where he touches my heel. There is a hunger for him that is overwhelming, a need to feel him in every possible way, and I spread my own wings beneath his, the edges of blue just visible in the coming dawn. For all that I am focused on us – just us and the way I fell – there is some part of me that finds it symbolic: the creation of my own family with the rising of the sun.

"The sooner you start," I tell him with a wicked grin thrown over my welted shoulder: "The sooner we can try again."

I imagine him, just for a moment, that child that does not yet exist. I wish, quite fervently, for a boy that looks just like his father – like Wolfbane. That image fades quickly to be replaced by the striped stallion’s face, just behind me, the blue face I know so well. I swat the white tips of my long tail against his ribs, a reminder of my enthusiasm apparent at the twitch of muscles along the base of my tail.

I meet his eyes and the wicked grin is replaced by something warmer. The sun is just starting to lend color to our features, and I give him a navy smile that is encouraging and almost certainly besotted.

@[Wolfbane]

[Wolfbane]

When I'm alone slow dancing in the dark

He takes her and he takes his time, both impossibly complementary to one another when just a minute ago his body screamed for instant release. A more selfish mate could’ve, but Wolfbane encourages the thought that they were made for this (both Pegasi, both creatures of intense highs and lows) and so he rests his head along one side of her blue-curtained neck and together they defile her marriage bonds.

The time spent inside of her prompts him to forge new ones anyways.

Unspoken, the nonsensical words tumble together in a string of broken vows that, if said, would sound like, “She has become my wings,” or “Eternally felt and known.” Though seeing as they’re brought on in the heat of his arousal, Wolfbane keeps them to himself. He only wants this - Lepis - and so he takes just that, spinning out into a numb universe made up of her sighs, the smell of her sweat, and how they both seem to know what the other wants and where.

Just when the light grows strong enough to glance off the small pool, Bane grows too weak for restraint. A tether of himself is cast out into the waters of his Queen’s body, linking them irreversibly come hell or high water. Groaning like the animal he truly was, Lepis’ consort takes another greedy second of holding her tight underneath him before slipping away, pleased beyond measure.

Words might only ruin what he longs to convey in this breath of afterglow, leaving Wolfbane silent when otherwise he might’ve been idiotic. He feels nothing, yet all at once something, and so for good measure takes to rubbing his soaked forehead against the still-heady curves of her haunch. What he doesn’t feel is guilt (or victory either, for that matter) like he supposed he should. Everything that’s transpired between them threatens to upheave the careful peace they’ve spent so many years building but all he can sense is truth, the ironclad kind.

The Loessian-born mare was his now, and that shocked Bane because he’d never been the possessive type before.

“Don’t go.” He tells her flatly, a command or request. “Stay a while longer, let me love you.”

That sounded a bit softer, coming from the tongue of man who’s been dying of thirst for her.

Don't follow me, you'll end up in my arms

Lepis

[Lepis]

“For a while,” I promise, but already the idea of a few moments of rest is seeping in. Every tiny bit of me is humming in satisfaction and I contemplate never doing anything else ever again. I open my eyes at last, and the dawn light is surprisingly bright. How long had we been caught up, ignorant of anything but the other? The idea is exhilarating, but it occurs to me that anyone might have seen us. Though I am not ashamed of my actions; I know our time is limited before the real world begins to seep in again.

The westernmost wall of the cave mouth is bathed in sunlight coming up from the east. It strikes some of my most prized finds on a ledge near the rim, a dozen or so split geodes that reflect the light in hundreds of tiny pieces like dawn stars. ‘Time to go back to Sylva’, those stars say, you’ll get there in time to greet the autumn kingdom as the rest of them are rising. For the better part of six months I have followed this schedule, passing my afternoons and nights in Loess, returning to Sylva to show my face in the mornings.

The idea of not going back has always been tempting, but I have never dared.

My hus- no. Arthas. The bonds that had seemed unshakeable are suddenly no more than dust. Arthas will be desolate. I know this, and for an instant Wolfbane’s warm breath on my tender flesh is more bitter than sweet.

I don’t want to think about that. It is sad.

So I don’t, and I project contentment instead.

Much better.

Stablized in the space of a heartbeat, I stretch out my long wings, brushing the cold stone of the cavern floor with the ends. A bit of winter chill slides up my sides where the downy shields had been protecting me, but the sense of relaxation that has begin to slip over me is worth a bit of cold. I am exposed, the long bones of my slender wings within easy reach, but I am not afraid. The yellow and blue stallion behind me is the only creature I trust so implicitly, he who had seen my freshly broken wing.

I wonder, for the first time, if he knows the story behind it.

Sad again.

Wary of using too much emotion, I instead choose another form of distraction. I take a step toward him, so the back of my thigh presses against his sweat damp skin. I disguise this with an exaggerated show of scratching at an itch with an opposite foot. There is no denying the wantoness in my actions, no mistaking the need in my eyes.

“I could stay a while,” I tell him from below thick lashes, my voice gone somehow husky “I’ll be staying forever soon enough anyway.” It’s easier to focus on the here and now.

@[Wolfbane]

[Wolfbane]

When I'm alone slow dancing in the dark

Though the times have been few and far between, when Lepis touches him with her gift Wolfbane feels his body attune itself to the strange sensation. There’s the hint of knowledge he gets right before a feeling, just a twinge of surprise you could say. Not enough to build resistance or determine pure, outright forgery but just enough that when a blooming warmth overtakes him, Bane knows it can’t possibly all come from himself. The strange force of it cripples any other emotion he’d been feeling - lust, joy, love - and leaves him smothered in complacent silence.

His partner seems so sure of herself now, so completely ideal and practically vibrating in tune to the world around her. The drake can only watch in respectful, hushed wonder at the glowing quiver of her wings as they span out and over the packed earth of their tomb. “Her gleaming scars are bricks, each one.” He waxes poetic in his thoughts, eyeing the way they shine. “She’s built a fortress of herself and I’ve come to knock it down, add it to my own.”

He’s never heard the true story of her captivity, just like she’s never been privy to his childhood of physical and mental trauma.

Someone had, years ago, but he’s forgotten just who that was.

Only Lepis remains and she’s flush against him once more, right where he likes her best. The chains which once bound him into stupefied quiet are gone again, and those old familiar dogs of his come bounding back with full vigor. “You never really left, dove.” He chuckles, dark as the sin he covers her with seconds later. Neither daylight or threat of discovery holds him back now, so the Queen gives and he takes with interest, piling their forbidden intimacy in layers on top of one another until it’s as if no wrongdoing had been committed in the first place.

Later, when he’s good and truly spun out, Wolfbane stays a while longer in the inebriating scent they’ve left behind to watch her go, and only then does he spot the too-perfect collection of geodes shelved away. “I’ll add another.” He thinks, spinning out the dream of them so that it becomes a memory. Eternity passes, at last he leaves as well but that shiny, too-perfect memory stays put; just another thing encased in crystal.

Don't follow me, you'll end up in my arms

@[Lepis]